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The big news this week, aside from the medical journal retracting its previous statements linking vaccines to autism, is Obama's proposed budget for the United States.
Among the many cuts and proposals that caught my attention, it's the president's mandate for NASA that I wanted to discuss today.
The space shuttle fleet is being grounded this year, as always was the plan. Considering that the shuttle was conceived of in the 50's, with construction beginning in the 70's, I remain confident that the decision to mothball what's left of the shuttle fleet was the right decision.
The fact that these machines have been flying for the past 30 years is an amazing feat in itself. The question however, is what have they accomplished?
We built and maintained a few telescopes, we continue to build and maintain a space station with no clear scientific or exploration goal in mind and we sent a really old man back into space.
Since the Apollo program, we haven't returned to the moon.
Once the shuttle is in a museum, we won't even be able to get into space without hitching a ride with the Russians.
The question I asked us a while ago, was a simple "What's next"?
After going through the budget and the NASA Administrators remarks, I can't tell you. I can however, tell you what's not next.
The initiative, for now at least, is more about what NASA plans to cancel than what it plans to pursue. The six-year-old Constellation program, which had been focused on developing new boosters, Apollo-like orbiters and a 21st century lunar lander, all with the goal of making long-term stays on the moon possible, will be scrapped, after $9 billion and a single flight of the Ares 1 booster last October. The longer-term goal of venturing out to Mars is being tabled along with it.
In place of that program, NASA will tackle a grab bag of other projects: extending the life of the so-far unfinished International Space Station (ISS) until 2020, and spending $4.9 billion to develop better robotics, $7.8 billion to develop new flight techniques such as in-orbit fuel depots and closed-loop life-support systems, and $3 billion to develop new unmanned ships. There are no entirely unworthy objectives in that list (with the possible exception of the ISS), but there's also no clear way of getting humans back into space after 2010, once the shuttles are mothballed.
-From TIME Magazine
With everything going on in the world today, some might applaud this approach. Why invest in space when the education system is so underfunded?
To that I would answer: "To get children excited about learning again".
I believe with every fiber in my being that exploring this universe is paramount to our continued evolution as a species and is an important step forward.
I now also believe that it won't be NASA that leads the way.
I am discouraged, yet confident that private business and developing space programs like those in China and India will eventually inspire us again.
Until that time, Personally. I will actively seek a person/group/company/program to involve myself with in the hopes that I can at least get a few people enthralled in the space again. (Any recommendations?)
I want my child looking upwards, never knowing what's there, but knowing that he can find out.
- Because I can.
Quote of the Day
"Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals. "
-From Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid (1969)
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